ucim wrote:Now, in practice, which ones would you kill and not give much of a second thought to?

Rats, feral pigeons, grey squirrels,* American mink, mosquitoes, tsetse flies, midges, horseflies, anyone in favour of FGM, ISIS, al-Qa'eda, al-Shabab, Boko Haram, neo-Nazi-type "ethnic cleansers" of any flavour, that village council that sentenced two girls to be paraded naked through the village and gang-raped as punishment for their brother running off with a married woman, ivory poachers, whoever it was that posted that Ched Evans should rape Jennifer Ellis and everyone who clicked "like" on that comment, any teacher who ever sat by and smiled encouragingly at a bully rather than intervening, the next five people I see talking on hand-held mobiles while driving, those guys machine-gunning dolphins in that cove and the fifty most drunk drink-drivers in the country.

Headshots where possible, at least for the first four.

How about you? What animals would you kill?

* I'm in Britain. Red squirrels are fine by me, not that I've ever seen one here.

in the "Dark Side of the News" thread, I had occasional vague rumblings of thought. One was that it'd be great to be able to zap "everyone in favour of FGM" to the Moon. No clothes, no phones, no cars, no money, just the people.Horrific for them, but wonderful for the world in general. Citation needed

This mutated a little into the question: "If every Justin Bieber fan on Earth was simultaneously teleported to the Moon, how long would it take radio stations to stop playing 'Go and &&&& yourself?'"

I think the transfer of mass from Earth to Moon would increase the rate at which the Moon is slowing the Earth's rotation and increasing day length, but I don't think jumping straight up would do that no matter how unevenly they were distributed. If they all set off sprinting east when they saw the zap coming and all jumped at the last moment before it hit them, then it would affect the Earth's rotation.

There would be a tiny lurch as the orbits of the Earth and Moon around a point between their centres had to shift slightly to adjust for the change in mass ratio, and if they were tightly clustered in some small area at the time and jumped vertically then whether the Moon was "up" or "down" for them would affect whether Earth and Moon got pushed apart or together just before that transfer. If the Moon's rising or setting when they go they'd accelerate or slow that mutual orbit instead ... if they're in Nyahururu. If they're in some gods-forsaken, corrupt, third-world backwater like the Palace of Westminster, though, out past the 45' latitude line ... they'd actually induce a slight movement relative the the Earth's orbital plane around the Sun, wouldn't they? That'd make launching robots to Mars trickier.

Lesson learned: always anaesthetise Justin Bieber fans before teleporting them to the Moon.